Calash

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The calash was a novelty style of headwear, fashionable in the last quarter of the 18th century and then revived from the 1820s to the early 1840s. The spacious shape of the bonnet accommodated the extravagant coiffures of the late 18th century as well as the sculpted towers of curls of the second quarter of the 19th century. This calash, complete in its original form, illustrates the unique construction of lightweight fabric over a frame of collapsible cane hoops, which could be folded back when not in use.

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art